-PRS Legislative Research The key findings of the report entitled: State of Agriculture in India by Tanvi Deshpande (March, 2017) are as follows: * The agriculture sector employs nearly half of the workforce in the country. However, it contributes to 17.5% of the GDP (at current prices in 2015-16). * Over the past few decades, the manufacturing and services sectors have increasingly contributed to the growth of the economy, while the agriculture sector’s...
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Farmers wilt under fodder, water crisis in Karnataka -Vishwanath Kulkarni & Anil Urs
-The Hindu Business Line Bengaluru: “There is no wateror fodder this year, and it has become tough to manage my three cows,” says Nagamma, a dairy farmer at Maradevanahalli village in Maddur taluk. The cows and her one-acre farm are her only sources of livelihood. “The milk yields have reduced: these days I get only about 5-6 litres, against 10-12 litres earlier,” she adds. The Maradevanahalli village panchayat provides about 200 litres...
More »Why I would not advocate vegetarianism -Sunita Narain
-Down to Earth Meat eating is not the key issue, it is the amount that is consumed and the manner in which it is produced. This is where India differs. Recently at the release of our book First Food: Culture of Taste, which discusses the link between biodiversity, nutrition and livelihoods, I was asked a question. “Why do you not, as an environmentalist espousing the cause of traditional and local diets that...
More »Arid Land yields a bounty of succulent fruits -Azera Parveen Rahman
-The Hindu Business Line Kutch presents an example of robust desert horticulture Over the past decade, the total horticultural Land under cultivation of fruits such as pomegranate, mango and date palm has doubled in Kutch and its fruit production has trebled. And why is this a surprise? Because this semi-arid region in Kutch has, through 10 years of toil, transformed the Landscape and set an innovative example in desert horticulture. Adversity, they say, can...
More »Direct transfer, 2 lakh sale points: Big fertiliser subsidy reform rollout in June -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express Under the proposed system, payment of subsidy is to be based on weekly settlement of claims from actual sales data captured on POS machines. Buoyed by its Landslide win in the recent Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the Narendra Modi government has decided to fast-track the implementation of the direct benefit transfer (DBT) system for payment of fertiliser subsidy to farmers. From the coming kharif season, beginning June, the Rs...
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